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House Democrats have asked the Department of Homeland Security to provide them with documents which manifest how Russian hackers infiltrated the election systems in 2016. However, Trump administration has been blocking their request.

Having been disillusioned of the fact that Trump administration do not want them to see the documents or have access to them, Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have sent a letter on Monday asking the committee’s Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) to issue a subpoena to legally oblige the DHS to produce them by February 5, 2018.

“Russia attacked our states in the last election to help Donald Trump get elected president. Why is the Trump Administration now concealing from Congress documents showing exactly how Russia did it?” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD).

For months the DHS has been withholding the information regarding the Russian government’s involvement and attempts to monitor, infiltrate, alter or hack nearly 21 state election voting systems at the time of the 2016 presidential election.

Cummings and Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL) had asked for copies of the notifications that the DHS had sent to the 21 states that were targeted by the Russian government-backed hackers on October 20 last year. However, the DHS shockingly provided a single email containing a 13 sentences long, vague and inconclusive script which was apparently read by Department employees to state election officials over the phone.

The generic script hardly states anything, giving no details about the nature of the attacks, not referring to any specific attempted hacking or the way they were carried out in the states that were targeted: Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Illinois, Alaska, Arizona, Oklahoma, Texas, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, and Delaware.

“We know that Russians attacked 21 state election systems, including in my home state of Illinois. Congress has an obligation to help states develop technologies and protocols to prevent election interference,” lawmaker Kelly, member of the Information Technology Subcommittee, said. “However, we cannot do that if the Trump Administration continues to actively conceal critical documents directly related to the security of our elections and voting systems. Chairman Gowdy needs to issue this subpoena so we can get answers and help states defend the integrity of their systems in the upcoming 2018 elections.”

“Despite repeated requests over the past several months, the Department has refused to provide the Oversight Committee with this information, and to the best of our knowledge, has not provided it to any congressional committee,” the letter to Gowdy read. “We have been extremely patient, but we can no longer allow the Trump Administration to defy our requests and withhold this critical information from Congress.”

During a joint subcommittee hearing on the “Cybersecurity of Voting Machines,” on November 29, 2017, Ranking Member Kelly had again asked Christopher Krebs, the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary of the National Protection and Program Directorate, when the documents would be handed to them. Krebs assured Kelly that they were going to be provided soon. They were not.

“The Intelligence Community has warned us that Russia intends to continue interfering with elections in the United States and around the world,” the Democratic Committee Members wrote. “It is our responsibility to obtain information about what happened in 2016 so we can adequately prepare for future attempts to interfere with our democracy.”

Earlier this month, Committee Members along with Kelly and Cummings requested the Department produce “copies of all documents related to the Russian government-backed attempts to monitor, penetrate, or hack state election systems — including the specific tools the attackers used. The Department has not produced these documents to date.”

The Democrats warned Gowdy that in case of his failure to issue the subpoena, they would push the full committee to put it to a vote at its next meeting.

“If you choose not to do so, then we ask that you place this matter on the agenda for our next regularly scheduled business meeting so that all Committee Members will have the opportunity to vote on a motion to issue this subpoena,” The Members concluded.